1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of baseball. More particularly, the invention pertains to a wooden bat for use in the game of baseball.
2. Description of Related Art
While amateur baseball leagues now use predominantly non-wooden baseball bats, most professional baseball leagues, including Major League baseball, exclusively use wooden bats. A major danger in the use of wooden bats is that they commonly break toward the narrower handle part of the bat when they strike a pitched baseball. Often this break is clean, causing the bat to break into two pieces, where the momentum of the bat barrel combined with the impact of the pitched baseball causes the barrel of the bat to go flying at a high speed toward other players or toward the spectators. The broken end of the barrel typically includes sharp and jagged edges which can cause serious injury when it strikes a person.
The statistics and records from the 125-year history of Major League baseball are based on the use of wooden baseball bats. Only wooden baseball bats formed from a single piece of wood of certain types and within a narrow range of specifications for dimensions and weight are permitted to be used in Major League baseball games. Baseball purists are extremely reticent to allow any type of modification to these bats, because it may change the way in which the batter swings the bat or the way the bat interacts with the ball, thereby providing the batter with either an advantage or a disadvantage with respect to batters using conventional wooden bats. For this reason, no modifications to solid wooden bats have been permitted by Major League baseball.
Modifications to wooden baseball bats to try to strengthen them against breakage are known in the art. Many of these modifications affect the striking surface of the bat including applying a surface coating to the bat and gluing radial pieces of wood together to form the bat. These modifications affect how the bat interacts with a pitched ball and thus would alter the game of baseball if permitted.
Modifications which do not affect the striking surface of the wooden bat are also known. U.S. Pat. No. 1,063,563, issued Jun. 3, 1913 to Lincoln S. May, discloses a wooden baseball bat with steel tubing in a longitudinal hole down the length of the bat to strengthen the bat. This modification alters the hitting properties of the bat and does not prevent the barrel of the bat from separating from the handle upon breakage. U.S. Pat. No. 1,603,904, issued Oct. 19, 1926, and U.S. Pat. No. 1,665,195, issued Apr. 3, 1928, both to Edward Cohn, disclose reinforced wooden baseball bats with metal rods in longitudinal holes down the length of the bats secured at both ends by threaded plugs. While these modifications physically hold the two ends of the bat together after breakage, they also significantly alter the hitting properties of the bat. U.S. Pat. No. 5,165,686, issued Nov. 24, 1992 to Edward H. Morgan, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0072711, by Nicholas D. Mallas published Mar. 29, 2007, disclose wooden baseball bats with a hole through the narrowed handle portion of the bat containing a reinforcement material. While these modifications may strengthen the narrowed portion of the bat, they do not always prevent the separation of the barrel from the handle when the bat breaks.
There is a need in the art for a wooden baseball bat that conforms to the specifications, dimensions, and hitting properties of wooden bats used in Major League baseball and, when broken by contact with a pitched baseball, does not separate into a handle portion and a projectile portion, which may injure players or spectators.